Female Leadership Essay Example

During the course of this semester, I have written about Sylvia Mendez and her impact on the segregation movement of the school. I learned how her parents fought to desegregate schools in California which eventually paved the way to desegregation in the whole country. I wrote about the barrier to social change, which talked about being aware as a leader of tomorrow, being educated and ready to fight intelligently for a change. I also wrote about leadership and gender, which focused on women and their struggle to lead due to the way society looks at them. Finally, I wrote about black children in Hollywood which talked about the stereotypes that black children often face in the Hollywood industry.

Stereotypes That Society Places on Minorities

In Sylvia Mendez presentation, I was touched by the courage and persistence of Mr. Mendez; I very much agree with the fact that in today's world, we still face De facto segregation around us and it is shaped by many stereotypes that society has placed on people especially minorities. It is our turn as the younger generation of changes things around us by treating everybody equally despite their race or color of their skin.

In the presentation about the barrier to social change, all the speakers just reinforced my feelings about education. I personally feel that I have an obligation to make changes in every area I find myself in. I believed that I need to value education so I can be able to fight the old system and change things in any way I can. All the speakers at the event were trying to get us youth to understand how much of an impact we can make simply by taking our education seriously because we are the leaders of tomorrow.

In Gender and Leadership, as a woman, I personally connected with this presentation more than any other. Women are often underestimated because they chose to lead differently than me. Society has painted the picture of leadership as being directly related to men so when women take that position, they are often faced with a lot of stereotypes that keep them from leading effectively.

In Black children in Hollywood, I realized again how far we still need to go as a society to provide equal chances for black people in general in Hollywood. This too ties up to the stereotypes that society has put minorities. Thinking back to my childhood, I can hardly name a movie or even cartoon where I had a black hero or can hardly remember ever playing with a black doll. All these go to show that blackness has been shown as negative, even when it comes to innocent little kids.

Each of the 4 events I wrote about truly encourages people to come together and promote change. In Sylvia Mendez presentation, she mainly encourages us the younger generation to come together and fight the de facto segregation taking an example from her parents who joined themselves to other people to fight segregation in their school district. During her presentation, she mentioned, " when you are fighting for something good, people will join you" (Mendez 9-18-17). There are a lot of people out there reading to join us, but they just need a leader capable of leading them effectively.

In the barrier of social change, all the authors really explained the importance of engaged citizenship by encouraging us to not be afraid that rather face inequalities in our daily life. They reminded us of the importance of education and how much change we can make if we value it, encourage others to stay in school and also join other to fight injustices.

In leadership and gender, Samatha Gordon encouraged women to not be afraid to "lead differently". It does not matter if society does not think that women are not fit for a certain position. As women, we need to support each other and prove them wrong.

In Black children in Hollywood, Dr. Olson explained how for years, Hollywood has chosen to keep black children from being represented as normal kids; instead, when given a role they just reinforced the already existing stereotypes. She mentioned " when black children are presented as the main character in Hollywood movies, they are often positioned to fit stereotypes or racist notions (Olson 2-6-18). She again showed us that we need to do better as a society; Hollywood needs to give better chances to black children to be who they truly are.

My Experience and Position About Leadership and Gender

As a personal experience, I can relate to leadership and gender. As a woman, I always feel like I have to work twice as hard in order to beat the stereotype and be recognized as much as a man. I remember when I was back in my home country we had to an election for class representative. I was going against a man and realized that I was expected to work harder on my campaign just because most people did not see a woman running for class president. In Samantha Gordon presentation, about Leadership and Gender, a journalist mentioned that " campaign election was created by men and favored male traits of talking over listening but in Hillary's Clinton case, her most important trait was listening (Klein 3-8-17). Hillary's best trait played against her because of the way the campaign election was designed. Just like in my case, I was trying to listen more to people's concern where my opponent was taking way more and was more outgoing than me. My listening eventually ended up becoming my weakness instead of my strength and I ended up losing.

I think all those events relate to each other. The common element among the four events is about reminding us of the new generation that we have the responsibility to come together and promote change in any area we may find ourselves in the future. Whether it is in campaign election, in the workplace or even Hollywood cinema we need to educate ourselves and contribute to making meaningful changes. As mentioned by Dr. Jackson in Social Change Event, " doing our job means getting educated to know what we are talking about" (Jackson, 10-18-17).

Overall the 4 events I have talked about throughout this semester have thought me to be more aware as a future leader of tomorrow. There are a lot of stereotypes placed against us women and against us people of color. It is important to have the courage and be educated enough to be able to speak intelligently on those issues to make changes.